Neutrinoless double-beta decay in covariant density functional theory

Abstract

We use covariant density functional theory beyond mean field in order to describe neutrinoless double-beta decay in a fully relativistic way. The dynamic effects of particle-number and angular-momentum conservations as well as shape fluctuations of quadrupole character are taken into account within the generator coordinate method for both initial and final nuclei. The calculations are based on the full relativistic transition operator. The nuclear matrix elements (NME’s) for a large number of possible transitions are investigated. The results are compared with various non-relativistic calculations, in particular also with the density functional theory based on the Gogny force. We find that the non-relativistic approximation is justified and that the total NME’s can be well approximated by the pure axial-vector coupling term. This corresponds to a considerable reduction of the computational effort.